David Derek Gellman

Derek Gellman was vice president of medicine and education at Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was born in London, the son of Israel Gellman, an industrial chemist, and educated at Hendon County Grammar School and then the University of London. He carried out his clinical studies at Middlesex Hospital, graduating in 1949.

He held house physician posts at Middlesex and Brompton hospitals, and then became a junior assistant in the pathology department at the University of Cambridge. In late 1953, he returned to the Middlesex Hospital as a research assistant, but had to relinquish his post when he was found to have tuberculosis. After a prolonged period of rest, he became a registrar at the Middlesex.

In 1956, he went to the United States, to Chicago, to join Victor Pollak’s nephrology research group. Two years later, he moved to Canada, initially to Winnipeg, as an assistant physician at the Winnipeg General Hospital and a demonstrator in medicine at the University of Manitoba Medical College. He eventually became a lecturer there and subsequently an assistant professor.

In the early 1970s, he moved to Ottawa, where he was a health systems analyst, and later director general of health standards, in the Department of National Health and Welfare. He was also a senior honorary lecturer in the department of epidemiology and community medicine at the University of Ottawa.

By the early 1980s he had moved to Vancouver, where he was vice president of medicine and education at Vancouver General Hospital and an honorary associate professor in the department of health care and epidemiology at the University of British Columbia. He was later a clinical associate professor in the department.

In September 1955 he married Vera née Armett, a physician and the daughter of Harry Armett, a school teacher. They had a son and a daughter.